Monday, November 24, 2014

First, arrive early. This won't help avoid the crowds, but at least you'll be out in time for happy hour. I arrived at the British Museum about twenty minutes before the majority of its exhibits opened, declined buying a £5 map, a £3 bottle of water, a £12 Rosetta stone tea cozy, and the London Bridge and made my way towards the entrance to the Egyptian Treasures exhibit. Just in time to join the ranks of an elementary school class and a tour group of elderly Frenchmen, along with the myriad others like myself. And at last the docents withdrew, the doors swung wide, and we swept through the threshold and into a gallery of human achievement. Before me, encased in a glass cube, stood the black mass of the Rosetta stone. The Rosetta Stone. That artifact which opened the dark crypt of Egyptian mystery, that cipher to all the sphinx's riddles, that great translator of the ancients... I stood in awe... and directly in front of someone's camera. This was a trend I became increasingly aware of throughout the day. Crossing any open space meant dodging a grid of invisible line-of-sights, ducking and weaving from one hall to the another. But this isn't going to be a screed against incessant amateur photography. While preventing this behavior may seem like a good idea, it would be more trouble than it's worth. (Although attempts have been made by putting all paintings behind a thin sheet of glass, thus, no matter where you stand, some part of the picture will be in glare.) Rather, we must ask why people are taking these photos. The answer, obviously, is to share them, and prove to others that they were there. Yet it won't be too long before they catch on and realize that nearly every item in the museum has been extensively photographed by professional photographers (books of these photographs available for £15 at the gift shop). It is only a matter of time before the discerning museum goer will realize the futility of the picture-taking. This is not good news, because for many people, this will eliminate the need to visit the museum at all! So what is the modern museum director to do? How does one make a museum endlessly photogenic? The answer lies in the question. Make the museum itself worth photographing. One could start by arranging the items not by region or epoch, but by complementary or shocking juxtapositions. The Rosetta Stone next to an Enigma machine. A sarcophagus in a room decorated by Warhol paintings. The permutations are endless, and, with frequent changes in layout, would inspire repeat visits, and plenty of snapshots.

Monday, November 17, 2014

On October 15th, I left the U.S. to travel across Europe. Posts from that date through last Friday were written in advance, and scheduled to post (this post is being written in a hostel in Krakow, which was only reached after accidentally ending up in Slovakia). As such, the main blog project, that is, the reviews of the bestsellers, will be postponed. I will, however, keep updating the blog, with travel essays as well as photos and video of weird and literary sights from around the continent.

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Probably one of the most famous film cameos for a writer, Marshall McLuhan's appearance in Annie Hall is still one of the great moments of film comedy.

#4: Francis Ford Coppola in Apocalypse Now

Coppola's appears briefly as a tv director during a battle scene.

#3: Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Johnny Depp, as Thompson alter-ego Raoul Duke, drops enough acid to break down the fourth wall and see the real Thompson.

#2: Thomas Pynchon on The Simpsons

I was unfortunately unable to find any video of the appearance. As far as cameos go, this is one of the most bizarre. You have to remember that, until this point, there were no extant recordings of Pynchon. Literally zero recordings of one of the most notable living American writers. And then, in 2004, after nearly forty years of silence, he appears on the Simpsons.

#1: Kurt Vonnegut in Back to School

Back to School is a great 80s college movie starring Rodney Dangerfield and a before-he-was-famous Robert Downey Jr. It also has one of the best used cameos I've ever seen. (Also, I'm a huge Vonnegut fan, so I'm a little biased in my choice of #1.)

Monday, November 10, 2014

John Grisham (1955- ) was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas, the son of a construction worker. At the age of twelve, his family moved to Southaven, Mississippi. He graduated with a B.S. from Mississippi State University in 1979. He passed the Mississippi Bar exam in 1981, and received his J.D. from the University of Mississippi. In 1981, he married Renee Jones, with whom he had two children.

Grisham began a successful law practice in 1981, starting in criminal law, and moving to more lucrative civil law. In 1984, he was elected to the Mississippi State House of Representatives, a position he held in addition to running his law practice. A case he witnessed while in the state legislature led him to write his first novel, A Time to Kill (1989). He had trouble finding an agent and publisher. He eventually found both, and a limited run of 5,000 copies was printed of his first novel. In 1990, Grisham resigned from his position on state legislature and retired his practice. In 1991, Doubleday published his second novel, The Firm. It was a massive commercial success, as were his third and fourth novels, The Pelican Brief (1992) and The Client (1993). His fourth book, The Chamber (1994) is the first of eleven novels to become the number one annual bestselling novel in the U.S.

Since 1989, Grisham has published a total of 28 novels, four children's books, and a work of non-fiction. His family splits its time between homes in Oxford, Mississippi, Charlottesville, Virginia, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Grisham also serves as a board member on the Innocence Project.

The Book:

Length: 434 pages

Subject/Genre: Law/Courtroom thriller

The Rainmaker is the first person account of Rudy Baylor's last semester in law school, establishment of his career, and the giant case he lucked into. Baylor is broke, working part time at a bar whose status as a front for illegal money is an open secret. During his last semester, as part of a class Rudy helps advise some elderly retirees on legal matters. He ends up renting a room from Mrs. Birdie Birdsong, an old woman whose will suggests a massive fortune, and he befriends, and later signs on, the Black family, whose son was wrongly denied a bone marrow transplant by their insurance company, Great Benefit. After he graduates and multiple job possibilities fall through unexpectedly, he ends up working for "Bruiser" Stone, the crooked lawyer friend/accomplice of the bar owner. It's here he befriends the bizarre Deck Shifflet, a would-be lawyer who can't pass the bar. When Bruiser and the bar owner flee the country to avoid an FBI raid, Rudy and Deck start their own practice.

The insurance case turns out to be the loose thread in a major cover-up, and novice Rudy is sent up against a corporation worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and the best lawyers money can buy. In the meantime, Rudy falls in love with Kelly Riker, a beautiful young woman who's married to an abusive lunatic.

I usually don't like spoiling the endings, but it's pretty relevant here. This is a David vs. Goliath story, with the lower middle class family and their broke rookie lawyer taking down a massive heartless organization. It's pretty much a revenge fantasy against insurance companies. Rudy, through various, usually legal, means, acquires tons of incriminating evidence against Great Benefit. We the readers know this information ahead of time, so we're anticipating him springing it on them in court, and I can't lie, it's pretty satisfying. Like I said, this is as much revenge fantasy as legal thriller.
While the subject matter is dark at times, The Rainmaker has a lot more humor and sarcasm than The Chamber, and is what I'd describe as a fun book. The film version was released in 1997. The film was directed by Francis Ford Coppola, and starred Matt Damon as Rudy Baylor, Danny DeVito as Deck Shifflet, Claire Danes as Kelly Riker, and John Voight as the opposing counsel, Leo F. Drummond.

Like The Chamber, this is an entertaining read, but there's nothing here that a good tv law procedural doesn't have. If you're looking for a fun time killer, try The Rainmaker. If not, don't.

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

One of my favorite contemporary short stories, and winner of the 2010 Nebula award for the short story, is "Ponies" by Kij Johnson. You can read it here on tor.com or listen to a reading of it here. (Sorry, audio player wouldn't embed.)

Monday, November 3, 2014

John Grisham (1955- ) was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas, the son of a construction worker. At the age of twelve, his family moved to Southaven, Mississippi. He graduated with a B.S. from Mississippi State University in 1979. He passed the Mississippi Bar exam in 1981, and received his J.D. from the University of Mississippi. In 1981, he married Renee Jones, with whom he had two children.

Grisham began a successful law practice in 1981, starting in criminal law, and moving to more lucrative civil law. In 1984, he was elected to the Mississippi State House of Representatives, a position he held in addition to running his law practice. A case he witnessed while in the state legislature led him to write his first novel, A Time to Kill (1989). He had trouble finding an agent and publisher. He eventually found both, and a limited run of 5,000 copies was printed of his first novel. In 1990, Grisham resigned from his position on state legislature and retired his practice. In 1991, Doubleday published his second novel, The Firm. It was a massive commercial success, as were his third and fourth novels, The Pelican Brief (1992) and The Client (1993). His fourth book, The Chamber (1994) is the first of eleven novels to become the number one annual bestselling novel in the U.S.

Since 1989, Grisham has published a total of 28 novels, four children's books, and a work of non-fiction. His family splits its time between homes in Oxford, Mississippi, Charlottesville, Virginia, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Grisham also serves as a board member on the Innocence Project.

The Book:

Length: 486 pagesSubject/Genre: Death Penalty Litigation/Legal ThrillerThe Chamber begins in 1967 in rural Mississippi. Sam Cayhall, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, assists in the bombing of a Jewish lawyer's office as part of the KKK's bombing campaign against civil rights activists. The bomb is set by another man, Rollie Wedge, and is put on a timer. The bomb detonates later that morning, killing the lawyer's twin children, and crippling the lawyer. Cayhall is caught by the police. He is tried, but the jury is stacked in his favor and is deadlocked. The same happens in a retrial. Fourteen years pass, attitudes change, and a new D.A., looking to make a name for himself, brings Cayhall back on trial. With testimony from the former imperial wizard of the KKK, Cayhall is convicted and given the death penalty.

In Chicago, young lawyer Adam Hall works for the major firm Kravitz & Bane, which had been representing Cayhall through his appeals as part of their pro bono program. Hall admits that, after his father's suicide when Hall was seventeen, he learned that he was Sam Cayhall's grandson. Hall goes on to say that he is against the death penalty in principle, and wants to represent his grandfather. This he does, and heads out to Mississippi, connecting with his family's dark past and the legal vagaries of death penalty litigation.

Grisham's novel strikes me as the equivalent of a strong episode of a tv courtroom drama. There's a lot of investigation and legal maneuvering, and a lot of tension over whether or not Cayhall will be executed. The characters come up against a lot of serious, morally troublesome issues, not the least of which is the death penalty itself. However, these issues are not dealt with to any depth. While I don't expect a fifty page treatise debating the morality of capital punishment, the pro arguments are basically 'it's justice/it gives closure' and the con arguments are just 'killing is wrong/it doesn't help anyone.' None of these points are argued beyond them being mentioned in conversation, and what could be a deep exploration of an incredibly contentious moral dilemma isn't really dealt with at all. Grisham acknowledges that there is such a dilemma, his characters take one side or the other, but all he really does is have people ask if it's really good or bad (I mean, he literally has them ask, a lot). It's easy for this novel to seem a lot deeper than it is, because it brings up serious topics, but it doesn't really have anything interesting to say about them.

The novel was adapted to film in 1996. The Chamber starred Gene Hackman as Sam Cayhall, Faye Dunaway as Lee Cayhall, and Chris O'Donnell as Adam Hall.

The film was a critical catastrophe, with even Grisham himself describing it as "a train wreck." It did, however, receive one award nomination: Faye Dunaway for worst supporting actress at the 1997 Razzies.

Make no mistake, though, the novel was entertaining. It's like a good episode of Law & Order. If you want something entertaining to read that will kill time, The Chamber is a good choice.